“Okay, I’m here.” She sat down at the other end of the table, her regular spot, then plunked a bottled water in front of her and twisted off the cap. “What did I miss?”
“The short version?” I said. “People are stealing food and we have to buy our own uniforms.”
“The talking points are in detail here,” Margo added, shooting me a look as she pushed an agenda to Rebecca to pass down to her. My grandmother squinted at it over her reading glasses.
“Uniforms,” she said, taking a sip of her water. “Didn’t we already decide against this?”
“We tabled it for further discussion,” Margo said slowly. “Is that . . . are you drinking a coconut water?”
My grandmother glanced down at the bottle’s label. “I don’t know, it was in the fridge. They’re pretty good. Would you like a taste?”
Rebecca bit her lip, then looked down at the table. My mother said, “Margo is of the mind that the subcontractors should also be in company-chosen attire.”
“You want the pool guys in uniform?” my grandmother said. “We’re lucky to get them to wear shirts.”
“They wear shirts,” I said, a bit too defensively.
“Not usually,” she replied. “And who’s paying for all this?”
“Employees will be asked to purchase their own work ensembles,” Margo told her. She sounded uncommonly flustered, although whether by the water issue or this one was hard to say. “It’s standard business practice.”
“Maybe so, but it’s a bad one,” my grandmother told her. “We’ll be breeding resentment among the people who have the closest contact with the clients during their vacations.”
“Those same clients need to know who they are dealing with when someone shows up at their rental house,” Margo said, rallying a bit.
“Then we order T-shirts with our company logo and make them the uniform. Cheaper and easier.”
“This is a professional environment,” Margo argued. “We can’t be wearing T-shirts.”
“But maybe we wouldn’t have to,” my mom pointed out. “I mean, we’re here at the office. There’s no question who we work for. Margo’s right, there should be no confusion who is at the properties. So we do T-shirts for everyone who is making house calls, and we just continue as we are.”
This, in a nutshell, was how every Friday meeting went. Margo came in swinging with some Big Idea and she and I got into it. Then my grandmother shot her down, and my mom worked out a compromise. You’d think we would have figured out a shortcut, but for whatever reason, we still had to do it like this, every single time.
“So it’s decided,” my grandmother said, downing a bit more of Margo’s water. “Let’s get a quote from that T-shirt place we like. You know the one that we used for those giveaways last year.”
“Threadbare,” my mother said. “Over on Plexton.”
“Right. Margo, you’ll get some logos together for them?”
Margo nodded, but she didn’t look happy, the expression on her face the same one as when we were kids and me and Amber picked on her. Which was pretty often, if I was totally honest. Then, like now, she just made it too easy.
My mom and grandmother had already moved on, discussing some plumbing issue with one of the properties. I leaned over to Margo. “You know,” I said, as she sulkily crossed something off her agenda, “personally, I’d like having a required T-shirt. Then in the morning I wouldn’t even have to think about what to wear.”
She eyed my tank top. “Are you saying you do that now?”
And there you had it. No good deed—or kind word—goes unpunished. “Forget it,” I said, moving back again.
“Hey, I’m kidding.” She smiled at me, barely, then added, “I’m sorry about you and Luke.”
I nodded. “Me, too.”
“You think it’s really over, or just a fight?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s just really weird.”
She gave me a sympathetic look, then reached over and squeezed my hand. Say what you would about Margo—and I said more than anyone—she was still my sister.
“Margo,” my grandmother said now, “can we go ahead and move through the rest of these items? I’ve got to be at the building department at nine thirty to make nice with that inspector about walkway setbacks.”
“Right.” Margo shuffled her papers, back in charge. “Next item: the new additional linen inventory system. If you’ll flip over your agenda, you’ll see that I’ve incorporated a new process for managing and documenting client towel requests. If we can all look at diagram A, I’ll . . .”
She kept talking, going on about towels and allotments and overhead. I tried to listen, but my mind kept drifting, back to the events of the night I’d gone out with Theo. What if that text had gone through? Maybe he would have called that girl, but it wouldn’t have gone any further. And what was one stupid phone call, really, in the grand scheme of things?
Well—a lot. I knew that. And trying to break it down this way, to minor and major offenses, maybes and what-ifs, was like arguing over the origin of cracks in a broken egg. It was done. How it happened didn’t matter anymore.
When the meeting was finally over, my grandmother left for the building department, Rebecca returned to reception, and my mom and sister started talking about some homeowner who was unhappy with a bill he’d been sent. Well aware that at any moment they’d be descending on me for more details about Luke, I took advantage of this diversion and left for the storeroom, biscuit box in hand.